AMD Will Support Zen 3, Ryzen 4000 CPUs on X470, B450 Motherboards

Last week, we covered the news that AMD’s upcoming Zen 3 CPUs (presumably to debut under the Ryzen 4000 brand) would be incompatible with the company’s previous X470 and B450 motherboards. AMD has since decided to reverse course, citing end-user unhappiness with the decision as a major reason for its course correction.

The original reason for AMD’s decision not to update the UEFI on certain platforms is because apparently some early AM4 CPUs can only support a 128Mb UEFI. Most AMD motherboards, therefore, ship with this size of BIOS chip — and there’s a limited number of CPUs AMD can support in that amount of space, given that a certain amount of room is typically allocated for the UI interfaces that modern motherboards use. For that reason, AMD was going to shift Zen 3 / Ryzen 4000 support to the B550 platform and beyond.

Now, however, the company has pledged to bring Zen 3 support to 400-series chipsets. AMD clearly isn’t sure exactly how it’s going to pull this off, since the company literally says it’ll “work out a way” to make this happen. Reducing the number of CPUs that a motherboard supports could still work — but which CPUs do you remove to add features? How much onboard memory can you get back if OEMs drop to a basic text UI?

400-series motherboards might deploy a UEFI fork, where older CPUs would remain the default and the relative handful of users with newer chips would need to flash over to a beta UEFI variant. As always, support will depend on motherboard manufacturers being willing to add it in the first place. Since this strategy would require more complexity than simply issuing a UEFI update, some motherboard manufacturers may be more willing to adopt it than others. An updated version of AMD’s B550 chipset support diagram might look a bit like this:

Updated unofficial chipset support diagram for Zen 3.

In short, this is an announcement where the details are still being very much worked out. AMD has listed seven points in its PR statement on how the upgrade is supposed to work. The program is rather different than any upgrade service we’ve heard about, so you’d best read through them if you want to take advantage of it:

2). Using one of these beta BIOSes will probably remove support for previous CPUs.

3). The upgrade path will be one-way. BIOS flashback will not be supported.

4). BIOSes will only be made available to customers who have verified a Zen 3 CPU purchase, to minimize the chances that any motherboard is flashed for the wrong chip.

5). Beta BIOSes for various boards may not be available at the Zen 3 launch.

6). This will be the last upgrade for 400-series boards. Next-generation CPUs will require a B550 motherboard or later.

7). AMD continues to recommend a 500-series motherboard with a Zen 3 CPU for an optimal experience.

Features like PCIe 4.0, for example, are highly unlikely to be supported on X470 / B450 motherboards in the future with future Zen 3 CPUs.

Overall, this is an impressive example of a company changing course in response to enthusiast feedback and going out of its way to enable support for a relatively small group of people. X370 motherboards, however, will be limited to Zen 2 / Ryzen 3000.

I genuinely thought AMD’s overall upgrade record was defensible before the company made this announcement, so extending additional support to X470 is icing on the cake. At this point, both X370 and X470 will have been supported through two full architectural upgrade cycles — X370 with Zen+ and Zen 2, X470 with Zen 2 and Zen 3.

AMD also reiterated that Zen 3 will be available in 2020, though no information on launch timing, pricing, or core counts is available. I suspect AMD will emphasize improving performance per core rather than core counts this year, in much the same way that Zen+ built on Zen’s IPC and power consumption rather than dramatically tweaking core counts. The market needs time to digest the core count doubling we’ve seen in the past year and I think that’ll happen throughout 2020 and into 2021.

I am glad that AMD regained their sanity. The not knowing how they will do it part is pretty lame. They will do the same way they added support for Zen2. They already dropped support on many of those boards (the oem's that is) in the bios. It would be pretty simple to have a flavor of the new Zen 3 bios in conjunction with Zen+ and another with Zen2 for those bios too small for all of them. This was always in their ability to begin with. Glad that the consumers are able to force their hand and hold them to their commitment.

Today, so pressured by invasion of privacy, sales margins, marketing, promises of technology that change our lives adorned with fireworks is difficult to discern what intentions are those of large technology companies.... it's too complex watching from my burrow.

If I am clear about what has happened this week, it is that the champion of the battle between solvency (marketing) and creativity (Zen) has been the User ... Us!

Now I choose to be happy for the Creators, Architects and Developers who believe in the possibility of changing the world ...

.... and above all I am happy for people like You, for transmitting from the silence the meaning of the word Identity, demonstrating exemplary helping from the beginning of the AMD Support Forums (IMO now is very easy to say "I'm AMD fan" )....

I hope you enjoy watching your effort over the years very much, you have also created the AMD from now

3). The upgrade path will be one-way. BIOS flashback will not be supported.Is a showstopper.

There is NO WAY I will risk that one - Buy Zen 3 remove Ryzen 2700X that took months to get working properly on my X470 board, fit the Zen 3, one way flash, and hope it works first time with no way back to use the 2700X if somethng is wrong?

If that is the solution then it is nothing more than a PR Stunt.

AMD were supposed to support X470/B450 with CPU upgrades through to the end of 2020 so they are not doing anyone any favors.

It is very likely that Motherboard Manufacturers who made X470 and B450 boards were also promised support for new CPU until the end of 2020 and they likely promised and promoted that to their Customers.

It is very likely that MSI and ASUS would have been left with lots of motherboards they could not sell.

I think that has more to do with the reversal than anything "enthusiasts" or AMD fans have to say about it.

Let's drop the attempted positive spin on this situation and be honest about it.

Zen 3 support for X470 and B450 boards should never have been dropped in the first place.

As far as I see it - it is still dropped unless this 1 way flash nonsense is changed.

3). The upgrade path will be one-way. BIOS flashback will not be supported.Is a showstopper.

This has been the case since the beginning of Ryzen, AMD never offered the option to roll back AGESA versions via BIOS e. g. from PinnaclePI_AM4 (2018) to SummitPI_ AM4 (2017)... and apparently it will continue to get worse.

There is NO WAY I will risk that one - Buy Zen 3 remove Ryzen 2700X that took months to get working properly on my X470 board, fit the Zen 3, one way flash, and hope it works first time with no way back to use the 2700X if somethng is wrong?

"I something is wrong ... you should buy another mobo" : invisible letter of AMD and Motherboards Manufactures

If that is the solution then it is nothing more than a PR Stunt.

Yes, after the show "AMD presents ...'We have rectified our decision!!" continues the "routine".

Let's drop the attempted positive spin on this situation and be honest about it.

Zen 3 support for X470 and B450 boards should never have been dropped in the first place.

As far as I see it - it is still dropped unless this 1 way flash nonsense is changed.

IMO it was a well organized plan from the beginning wanting to appear restrained to later become "heroes"... a striking showcase wanting to appear ethical, it is also profitable.

My skepticism tells me that AMD is not going to facilitate the BIOS choice, I wish to be wrong about it.

Fortunately generous users of the Community will continue to offer us How-To

I still enjoy the Ryzen and X370 / B350 evolution (at first it was a very expensive paperweight) and I suppose, in my case, that it is coming to an end if I do not buy Ryzen 4000 and X570 / X670, I will not do it.

I want to think that the positive side of all this is AMD's innovative approach will have spread to other future CEOs and will offer new ideas to improve the ecosystem Technology / Respect.

I would hope that most OEMs will offer at least a dual choice of bios to flash. Even on the smaller bios they should have enough room to support either all of Zen+ and Zen3 or Zen2 and Zen3. I agree that with AMD's record of instability at launch with their firmware that the ability to still run your older processor is imperative. If you end up deciding you would be better to get another board after trying you current board with Zen 3, your motherboard should not be bricked to using your current processor. Hopefully the OEM's will give us options. You are right though. This decision if it happens without older support will likely make the more educated buyers prefer a new board. In my case it will still make me skip this new generation if I can't revert to using my Zen 2 processor.

Unless anything changes I am skipping. In fact I am going back to Intel for my next personal build.If I have to purchase a new motherboard I may as well look at what Intel have to offer and it does look like they are back in the game with their latest processors.

I am glad AMD has had renewed success with Ryzen. However for me personally, I returned my first attempt at Ryzen Zen and a B350 that would not run stable and wasn't going to chance it never being fixed so back it went. Then last August I gave a B450 another chance with a 3600. It has had random stability issues but has gotten better with updates. However I am now on my 3rd motherboard that I just had to pull again last night for being DOA. I realize that the motherboard is not made by AMD, but I do feel that AMD could have better oversight over the OEM's and enforce better quality standards. Since getting this machine built last August I have been down waiting on motherboards more than it has been running. I know someone will likely say it's your power supply. FYI all 3 boards were used with different 80+ gold 750 watt power supplies to be sure that was not the issues. All I know is my 2 Intel builds have zero issues from the day I got them till now. In case anyone is interested I have a highly recommended MSi B450 Tomahawk board. It suddenly died and MSi twice now has sent bad boards back to me in exchange having to wait 2 months each time. I would consider at this point going ahead and buying 570 but locally they are all sold out.

So MicroCenter got on B450 Tomahawk Max in today and I just reserved it. I know the issues I have had are likely bad luck, so I am wishing myself good luck on another one of these. I just can't wait another 4-7 weeks to get my board back again.

I would hope that most OEMs will offer at least a dual choice of bios to flash. Even on the smaller bios they should have enough room to support either all of Zen+ and Zen3 or Zen2 and Zen3.

Yes!! ... that would be a real show of respect to us!!

1 BIOS for Zen & Zen+ and other for Zen 2 & 3 also an official tool to roll back AGESA version without problem available from the CPU or motherboard support page or remove the software limitation that prevents the return.

I agree that with AMD's record of instability at launch with their firmware that the ability to still run your older processor is imperative.

All deliveries without anesthesia are painful and I'm aware that AMD was tenacious, I was patient, everything got better, it's honest to acknowledge it and say Congratulations AMD!!... but if you still selling previous generations those customers deserve the same respect.